


So long

by Em_Jaye



Series: The Long Way Around [9]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Agent Carter (TV) Compliant, Agent Carter References, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Fix-It, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 19:02:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20069011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Em_Jaye/pseuds/Em_Jaye
Summary: Woody Allen once said, 'If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans." With that in mind, Darcy had to wonder if there was anyone who could make God laugh quite like Steve Rogers.January 1972: A trip back





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Crimtasic gets the most cred for this one. She's a divine being and I love her ❤️

Darcy didn’t like the nights that Steve didn’t come to get her. It wasn’t just that she’d grown immensely comfortable with their routine, or that she didn’t want to walk home alone in the rain. It was that if he wasn’t at the diner to pick her up at 7:59pm, there was usually only one reason.

That reason greeted her as soon as she turned her key in the door and was met with the sight of Steve at the kitchen table. She dropped her purse and keys to cross to him; she shrugged out of her coat, gloves, and scarf along the way. He was sitting shirtless, with wet hair, the aluminum first aid box laid out in the yellow light from the overhead lamp.

She went to the freezer first and dumped the ice tray into their well-loved ice pack before she dropped into the seat across from him, unable to help the way her breath left her when she got a full view of his injuries.

Both of Steve’s eyes were blackened, the bridge of his nose broken and still bleeding. His bottom lip was fat and turning purple to match the myriad of bruises and cuts that were blossoming across his chest and back. Still, he offered her a wry smile. “You should see the other guy.”

She didn’t smile as she continued cataloging wounds. “Is he… y’know… alive?” she asked, reaching for the mercurochrome and the bandages.

“Oh yeah,” Steve assured her. “He’ll be fine.”

He didn’t protest when she handed him the ice to hold to his nose while she dabbed the bright red liquid onto the deeper cut near his mouth. Her gaze fell to the other side of the table and the plain envelope of cash that always accompanied nights like these. “You know you don’t have to do this, Steve.”

He sucked an inhale through his teeth when she pressed a peroxide-soaked cotton ball to the gash on his chest. “It’s not that bad,” he insisted. “I can handle worse than a couple of fights while work’s thin.” He dropped his gaze to watch her apply a bandage. “And this’ll all be healed up in a few days at the most.”

He wasn’t wrong. He healed fast and he had obviously dealt with much worse. And after their first winter in California—when the construction work that usually paid his bills had dried up almost completely—Steve had to find other, more creative ways to make money without a driver’s license, social security number, or a birth certificate. Odd jobs. Pool sharking. Boxing.

They were quiet for another few minutes. Steve unscrewed the seal of the ice pack and removed one of the ice cubes. He sucked it into his mouth and brought a hand up to hold it to his fat lip. Darcy kept her focus on his bruised and broken skin, performing the first aid ritual he really didn’t need.

But if he didn’t want her fussing over him, he would have told her to stop the first time he’d won a match and returned bloody and aching with a pocket full of cash.

But he hadn’t pushed her hands away then. Or any time since.

And honestly, she told herself, if he _really_ didn’t want her fussing over him, he wouldn’t have taken up bare-knuckle boxing in a shady underground ring to pay his share of the rent during the winter months.

She didn’t want to know how he’d found out about these fights—how he’d worked his way into the rotation of idiots willing to beat the shit out of each other for a couple hundred bucks. And she definitely didn’t want to watch. It didn’t matter that he kept winning—that as long as the person who hit the hardest won, he was guaranteed—she didn’t want to see what had to happen to make him come home looking like this.

She glanced back at the envelope and steadied herself with a deep breath. “Is that enough for a ticket back to Jersey?” she asked, careful not to look at him.

He sighed. “Darcy…”

“Yes or no.”

“Yes.”

She spent a little too much time affixing the adhesive bandage to his skin before she made herself raise her gaze. “It’s been a while,” she reminded softly. “You said we need to keep—”

“I know what I said,” his response was tight.

She pursed her lips and sat back in her chair. “You should go,” she insisted. “Like you did last time. In and out. See if…” she shrugged. “I don’t know. But if you still think that’s where she’s going to go when she comes back.” She swallowed hard and reached up to pull her hair down to reach an itch at the crown of her skull. “You should go,” she repeated, even if it was the last thing she actually wanted. He’d gone back twice already—once in December of ’70 and once last summer. No trace or sign of Natasha either time.

Darcy wasn’t ready to admit that every time he left, she was terrified he’d realize how little sense it made for both of them to be in Oakland. She hated herself a little more every time she suggested he go back to New York or New Jersey and selfishly didn’t tell him to stay there. Keep trying that angle. Call her if there was any development. “Go and see.”

Steve digested this directive with a slow nod after he’d lowered the ice pack away from his face. “What are you going to do?”

“Stay here?” she shrugged, hoping she sounded more casual than she felt. “Keep working on that illusive plan B?” He nodded again and to her relief, did not ask what Plan B was. And neither of them felt like bringing up that it was more like Plan J at this point. “I shouldn’t be more than a few days,” he said, finally.

She busied herself with cleaning up the mess they’d made of the table. “Plus, if you go now, while your pretty face is all pounded to shit,” she said with another glance in his direction, “you’re much less likely to have anyone recognize you.”

She took him to the airport early the next morning. Neither of them said much until she pulled up to the departures lane and put the Buick in park. Darcy drummed her fingers on the steering wheel.

“Be careful.”

He nodded. “I’ll call you when I get there.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, if you think of it,” she said, because she didn’t trust herself to say anything else. Anything else might have come out like a question—one they were both doing their best not to ask.

_How long are we going to do this? _

Steve paused with his fingers wrapped around the handle. “Do me a favor?” he asked and offered one of those half-smiles. “Accept the charges this time?”

She rolled her eyes. “One time, Steve. That was one time!”

There was a moment that passed between them, right before he got out of the car. A moment where it felt like he was hesitating. When it would have been too easy to let go of the wheel and slide across the front seat to put her arms around him and tell him she didn’t want him to go.

But it was only a moment, broken by the sound of a horn as a boxy brown car pulled up behind them.

“Get out of here,” she said, abruptly. “Before you miss your flight.”

“I’ll talk to you tonight,” he said and hopped out, dragging his small duffle from the floor of the passenger side. He waited just another second, the door still open, looking as though he was about to say something else.

The car behind them honked again. Darcy grimaced and leaned out her window. “Asshole!” she yelled back. “Patience is a fucking virtue!” She looked back to Steve to find him smiling again as he closed the door and let her drive off.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which the author exorcises most of her salt and angst with minimal apology.

California might have been gray and rainy, but New Jersey was freezing and covered in ice. The bus he took from the airport to the motel closest to the base almost didn’t make it. He and the handful of other passengers spent a tense extra hour and a half crawling along the highway, bracing themselves as the wheels spun and the bus fishtailed at each turn. By the time they made it to his destination, the sun was long gone and there was nothing sane to do but check in to the cheapest room the motor inn had to offer and wait for the morning.

He called Darcy to let her know he’d arrived, but the phone rang ten times before he realized the time in Oakland. She was still at work and would be for the next two hours. Steve hung up the phone and ran a hand over his tired face. He didn’t want to stay up and wait that long for a conversation that would last five minutes at most.

He was up early the next morning to bundle up against the cold and trudge the two miles down the road to Camp Lehigh. Security was tighter than it had been six months ago. Two armed soldiers manned the gate now and a third was posted in a tower above them. Steve found himself waiting for hours longer than he had before for the chance to slip in unnoticed; it made him jumpier and had him spending half his time on the other side of the fence looking over his shoulder, trying a little too hard not to be suspicious.

No one stopped him. With his beard and darker, longer hair, no one recognized him. His bruises and cuts from his last fight had healed without scarring, making him just forgettable enough to keep him in the clear. As long as he stayed among the SHIELD employees and away from the high-and-tight haircuts of the Army recruits, he had no problem blending in.

But it didn’t matter if he blended in or didn’t, he didn’t find what he was looking for. Natasha was not there—had not been there, as far as he could tell. His plan to return to the woods where they’d last seen each other was shelved when he realized it had been clear cut. A new indoor training facility had been constructed in its place, dashing any lingering hope Steve might have had that she’d left some sign there. Some tiny breadcrumb he could follow to the chance to get them back where they belonged. Again, Steve cursed himself for not taking the time to leave her a signal eighteen months ago. To give her some kind of trail to follow them to California.

Torturing and berating himself like he’d done both times before was pointless—but it didn’t stop him. Just like the overwhelming evidence that Natasha had not been able to come back didn’t stop him from checking every source he could think of for a sign of her.

But there was no hint of her on the base. No one had ever heard of Natalie Rushman, Laura Matthers, or Mary Farrell. No banks or post offices had anything in the way of safe deposit boxes or PO boxes under any of those names—or any of the aliases of his she would know to use.

After two days of more nothing than usual, Steve checked out of his motel and—without thinking too hard—caught a bus to New York. It was what he’d done before. Flown into New Jersey and out of New York. Just like the last two times, poking around Stark Industries was a dead-end. If Natasha had come back, it appeared she hadn’t gone to New York at all.

Steve spent the evening of his third day on the East coast wandering through Manhattan. Hands in his pockets, collar turned up against the icy wind, trying to remind himself that he’d missed this. That he’d missed real winter. A real city. The cold, harsh indifference of a city like New York. A place so big it laughed at anyone who tried to claim it; where it was so easy and common to be swallowed up and spit back out that the simple act of surviving there made you tougher. Harder.

It didn’t surprise him when he found himself in Brooklyn. He’d hoped that the sight of his old neighborhood would stir something in him, make him feel a little less lost. But it was just the opposite. Nothing about _this_ Brooklyn, _this_ New York, felt like home anymore. It was no longer the city he’d grown up in. And it hadn’t yet turned into the city he’d learned to love after he woke up from the ice. He didn’t know who this Brooklyn belonged to, but it wasn’t him.

The ground floor of the hotel where he found a room looked familiar when he’d spotted it from across the street. But it wasn’t until he’d paid for the night and acquired a key that he realized he’d been there before. Only it hadn’t been a bar and lounge attached to a hotel back then—it had been a dress shop. And he hadn’t come in through the front door. He’d crashed through the window while chasing a Hydra agent.

Steve shook his head as he sipped his bourbon and debated placing an order for something to eat. He’d just decided to ask for a menu when a man ambled up on the barstool one over from him. He leaned an aluminum crutch against the empty stool between them and cleared his throat to get Steve’s attention. “This okay here?”

“Of course,” Steve answered before he turned to look. He was glad he’d waited that extra moment. It gave his new companion a chance to look away and settle with his arms folded on the bar in front of him. And it gave Steve a moment to gape in disbelief at the fact that Daniel Sousa had just sat down beside him.

He was good looking—but Steve had already known that from the photos he’d seen. He had dark wavy hair with a few gray streaks near his temples and lines by his eyes and mouth that suggested he spent a lot of time laughing. Steve couldn’t help but stare, frozen in place, until Daniel noticed he’d become the center of his attention and slowly turned his head back. There was a nervous half-smile on his face, and he motioned to the crutch again. “I can move it,” he said. “If you’re waiting for someone.”

It was too late to leave now. Steve forced himself out of his frozen panic and cleared his throat. He shook his head. “No, no,” he said quickly. “Sorry, I just…thought I recognized you.”

Daniel laughed. “You might,” he said, accepting this excuse easily. “You from around here?”

Steve shook his head and coughed into a closed fist as he turned back to the bar and picked up his tumbler again. “No,” he repeated. “Just visiting.”

To his relief, the bartender stepped up and pulled Daniel’s attention away. “Waitin’ on the missus, Sous?” he asked, unaware that the question made Steve’s stomach bottom out.

“You know it,” Daniel laughed and checked a heavy, gold watch on his wrist. “Twenty-five years,” he continued, squinting at the time. “And she’s never once been on time.”

Despite that he didn’t want to give away that he was listening, Steve frowned into his glass. He couldn’t imagine Peggy being late for anything. His Peggy had been punctual to a fault. The bartender laughed and shook his head. “Got a good reason, at least?”

“Busy saving the world, most times,” Daniel said with another good-natured smile. “I don’t think she’ll let me sit here too long though,” he added. “We’re celebrating.”

He couldn’t help that he glanced over. “What’s the occasion?” he heard himself ask. Even though he didn’t care, he reminded himself. Only that didn’t quite feel right. Was it that he didn’t care? Or that he didn’t want to know?

It didn’t matter. Daniel was going to tell him anyway. “Our daughter,” he said, and Steve wished that he hadn’t asked. “She got her acceptance letter today—she’s going to Paris in the fall.”

“Paris?” he asked, because that was the polite thing to do once you’d already started a conversation. “What’s in Paris?”

“A university with a program for international relations,” he said with a wide, proud smile. “She wants to work for the UN someday.” He shook his head and glanced down at his watch again. “Her mother was worried she’d want to go into the military but no,” his shrugged. “Our girl just wants to find a way to make everyone get along.”

“And she’s gotta go all the way to Paris to do that?” the bartender asked with a laugh.

He nodded. “And she had to be fluent in French to get in,” he explained. “Which is half the reason we’re celebrating. Peg’s going be thrilled when I tell her we don’t have to help study for any more entrance exams. I never want to conjugate another verb as long as I live.”

Steve studied the man on the stool beside him, so quietly proud of his daughter. So content to be waiting for his wife so they could celebrate something so simple together. Celebrating that they’d helped their kid accomplish something. It was so intimate in its normalcy that thinking about it too hard made him want to look away, like he’d done something wrong.

He _had_, he realized with another twist in his gut as Daniel turned back to the bartender. He’d almost stopped this from happening. He’d believed with all of his heart that his love for Peggy was more important than this—than this whole life she’d built without him. He cleared his throat again and caught the bartender’s attention. “That’s on me,” he said before he could talk himself out of it.

Daniel looked over, surprised. “Thanks, pal.”

“What—um—” he coughed again as two more bourbon on the rocks were set on the bar. “What’s your daughter’s name?” he asked, even though he knew. Because he’d met her a few times. He remembered her as serious and quiet, with dark eyes and a smile that wasn’t quick to arrive, but pleasant when it did. By the time he’d met her, she was fluent in five languages and had three kids of her own. And she _did_ work at the UN.

“Anna,” Daniel said with another half-smile.

Steve picked up the fresh glass and waited for his companion to do the same. “Congratulations, Anna,” he said and clinked his glass with Daniel’s. They drank together before Steve reached into his wallet and set a few bills on the bar. “Have a good night,” he said, and offered Daniel a friendly pat on the shoulder.

Upstairs in his room, the radiator was working too hard and the tiny space felt stuffy and too hot. He opened the window and let in a gust of icy wind, but it didn’t help. He felt caged. Restless. Like he was supposed to be doing something, but he couldn’t remember what. He looked at the phone and then his watch again, cursing the time change. It wasn’t that he wanted to tell Darcy what had just happened—he wasn’t sure she’d care. But she would at least distract him with a dumb joke or a story about what customer had made her want to drive a fork through their hand today. And that would be something, at least.

Frustrated with himself, with the situation, with just about everything, Steve got up from the bed and closed the window again, forcing himself back downstairs, intent on clearing his head with a long walk. He had to walk through the restaurant again to get back to the street.

His eyes found her without even trying when he made his way past the bar. He caught her reflection in the mirror and stopped in his tracks. She’d only just arrived, judging by the coat she still wore and the flush on her cheeks. He watched as she put her arms around Daniel’s shoulders and kissed his cheek before she sat down on the stool beside him. He’d ordered her a drink and they toasted before Daniel said something that made Peggy’s face light up and her press a hand to her lips, covering a delighted laugh.

Steve stood, unnoticed, in the lobby and waited. He waited for his chest to hurt. To feel that familiar rush of longing, that overwhelming desire to be near her again. To have her look at _him_ the way she was looking at Daniel.

But it wasn’t there. He felt other familiar things: the urge to smile at the sight of her, fondness and nostalgia for the people they’d been when she’d first appeared in his life. But it was undercut with a startling realization that, far away as he was, he couldn’t hear Peggy laughing at what Daniel was saying. And he had no idea what she sounded like when she laughed like she was now—unguarded and relaxed.

Steve smiled sadly to himself and shook his head as he glanced down and away from them. He’d never heard her laugh like that because he’d never _made_ her laugh like that. Because they hadn’t shared anything so intimate as a frustration over helping their child with homework they didn’t understand. Because she’d found someone else to share that with.

Because they’d never really belonged to each other in the first place.

“Staying for dinner, sir?” a young woman appeared at his side with a menu and a cloth napkin rolled with silverware.

“Oh,” Steve blinked and shook his head. “Uh, no. I’m just headed out, actually.”

She nodded with a polite smile, giving him the excuse he needed to take one last look at Peggy and Daniel, their heads close together, hands casually touching on the bar, before he turned and made his way back onto the street.

The wind felt a little better on his flushed cheeks as he started walking again. He didn’t have a destination in mind, just the need to burn off the strange feeling that had crept up on him.

He reached the bridge almost before he realized he’d been walking that way. He paused as the sidewalk turned and his hand fell to the railing and looked down at his snowy shoes with a smile. The memory of how he and Bucky used to put their feet on the bottom rail and stare over the edge to the rushing water below hit him suddenly, almost knocking the wind out of him. They would come here bridge after bad days—pull themselves up to hang their heads over the rail and yell as loud as they could—shouting their frustrations down to be carried away on the river.

The water tonight was black and looked punishingly cold when he made it to the center of the bridge to peer down. Icy and choppy and unforgiving. Steve could only look down at it for so long before he had to step back to shake off a chill.

“Have you got a light?”

The question, posed by a young man with shaggy blonde hair and unlit cigarette between his lips, took him by surprise and Steve instinctively patted the pockets of his coat. “Uh, no,” he said. “Sorry.”

The kid shrugged and thanked him anyway before he turned, leaving Steve alone against the railing again. Idly, he tapped his pockets again, considering calling after the kid when he felt something heavy in his inside chest pocket. He frowned and slipped his hand inside to retrieve whatever it was and almost laughed when he realized.

It had been months since he’d looked at his compass; it felt heavy and familiar in his hand as he ran his thumb over the top of it. Nothing special, just standard issue, included with his first set of boots and fatigues at Camp Lehigh. This stupid, little tool that had grounded him for so long. Kept him oriented. Kept him moving in what he thought was the right direction. His teeth skimmed his bottom lip when he popped it open with a practiced flick of his thumb.

And there she was. The Peggy he’d been holding onto. Holding out for. Staring up at him like she had been since 1945. He smiled softly and closed the compass again, trying to connect the woman he’d been carrying with him all these years with the woman he’d just seen in the restaurant.

But he couldn’t. Because the woman in the restaurant was real—she was lively and complex and exactly where she was supposed to be. And the photo in his hand suddenly didn’t feel like her anymore. It felt wrong to be holding on to who she used to be when she’d already let him go and become so much more.

And she had let him go. He hadn’t wanted to admit it—had forced the memory down and away—but she had. When he’d dropped from the cliff on Vormir—when he’d sacrificed the life he thought he wanted to bring Natasha back—it was Peggy’s voice he’d heard whisper to him. And when he closed his eyes and let himself remember, he could still hear it just as clearly as he had that day.

_Goodbye, my darling. _

Steve blamed the sting behind his nose on the cold as he pressed the closed compass to his lips. “So long, sweetheart,” he said softly before he opened his hand and let it fall. The wind stung and bit at his eyes while he stood there and watched the little brass instrument be swallowed by the dark and choppy water.

The phone rang four times before Darcy answered it, sounding out of breath. “Did you just get in?” he asked by way of greeting as he dropped down onto his hotel bed.

“Yeah,” she said. “I got stuck rolling all of Linda’s silverware because she had to bail early. Her kid's sick.”

From New York, he could hear the familiar sounds of her tossing her purse onto the counter and dragging one of the chairs over to sit beside the heavy wall-mount with the cord that was too short.

“Everything okay?” she asked, once she’d situated herself. “You sound weird.”

He wasn’t sure that was possible. He’d barely said anything. “Everything’s fine,” he said with a shrug and stretched out with his shoes still on, letting his head rest on the flattened pillows. “No luck with any sign of Natasha, though.”

“Mm,” she hummed, noncommittal. “Well, it was worth a try. When are you coming back?”

“I’ll grab a flight out tomorrow,” he said, making the decision as he said it out loud. He felt the corner of his lips twitch into a smile. “Why? You miss me?”

“Of course I do,” she said almost too easily, surprising him until she continued. “You put the Bisquick on the top shelf in the pantry and I can’t reach it. My pancake plans were railroaded by your short-person oppression.”

Steve smiled into the phone. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It was unintentional oppression at best.”

“Don’t worry,” she said breezily. “I saved you like, five gigantic spiders to evict when you get back as a built-in apology.”

He rolled his eyes. “Gosh, you’re so good to me—why do I ever leave?”

“Hey, random question.”

“Hit me.”

“How long before microwaves are invented? I would murder someone for some popcorn.”

Steve smiled. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But you can still make popcorn without a microwave.”

“How?” she scoffed. “On the stove? Like some kind of pioneer woman?”

He laughed. “I’ll show you how when I get back.”

“Do you want me to pick you up from the airport?” she asked, with a smile he could hear in her voice.

“No,” he shook his head. “I can just take a cab. I don’t know what time I’ll get in.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “I’ll just tell the raucous orgy I have scheduled that we’ll have to finish up early.”

“I appreciate that,” he laughed again. “Make sure they don’t use my towels this time.”

Darcy snorted. “Did you need anything else? I had a run-in with some syrup this afternoon and I’m still weirdly sticky.”

“Uh, no,” he said. “Go take a shower—that sounds gross.”

“You have no idea.”

“I’m begging you not to go into detail.”

“Goodnight, Steve,” Darcy said with an affectionate sigh. “I’ll see you at some point tomorrow.”

“Goodnight,” he echoed, and hung up the phone.

It took him a long time to fall asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:
> 
> A) You can pry my love for Peggysous from my cold. Dead. Hands. 
> 
> B) Natasha's aliases are all pulled from names she's used in the comics. 
> 
> C) Everything about that compass in canon makes me cringe and I will offer zero apologies for getting rid of it. Just a heads up. 
> 
> D) Hope you are enjoying this looong, slow burn as much as I am! I love you all.

**Author's Note:**

> <3


End file.
